Making Our Own Light
by Kathryn Claire O'Connor
Summary: After a spontaneous date with a stranger a week before his graduation, Henry finds himself and his date, Aubrey Freeman, transported to the Dark Castle - with some very unforeseen results. *story better than summary, I promise*
1. Chapter 1

**Hey, look, guys, I'm still alive - and now ready to post again! In explanation for my rather impromptu hiatus, I blame real life. Such an annoying thing, isn't it? Anyway, onto the story. This one is going to be seventeen chapters long. Enjoy!:) **

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><p>Henry dodged underneath an oncoming set piece, running while simultaneously swigging his backpack onto his shoulder. David was waiting to pick him up from school and take him out for a celebratory ice cream cone at Granny's to celebrate being one week from his graduation. It was a little juvenile of a thing to do, Henry knew, but he didn't care so long as it got him away from theater club a couple minutes early. And it would as soon as Henry could make his way out of the midst of end-of-the-day theater club chaos. He was definitely not grateful to his adoptive mother for "suggesting" that he join the club ("Club participation looks good on your record, and, despite the uniqueness of our situation, that's still something you might very well need to consider").<p>

A dozen more steps towards the edge of the stage, and then he'd be home free to flee the theater… but he could leave even quicker if he went out one of the doors of the backstage. So he decided to do that instead, and was a solid ten steps from the school's exit when he heard a shriek.

His head snapped up, and he saw that one of his classmates had gotten - of all things! - her ankle tangled up in one of the weights for the set, and she was getting ready to trip over the railing. Henry lunged forward at the same time that she fell backwards, dangling by her ankle.

She shrieked again, and Henry called out, "Hold on; I've got you" and "grab the rope with your hands" as he darted forward and unwound the rigging, lowering the rope slowly so that the girl managed to land on her back instead of her head.

"Are you okay?" Henry asked anxiously, scanning the girl and offering her a hand up as she caught her breath.

"Yeah," she managed, accepting his outstretched hand. "Thanks for your help; you really saved my skin."

"No problem," Henry grinned, suddenly not in such a hurry to leave the premises as he watched the girl brush a lock of long, wavy, blonde hair back out of muddy brown eyes. "My name's Henry Mills, by the way."

"I'm Aubrey Freeman," she replied. And then, "Wait a second - you're the mayor's son, aren't you?"

Henry nodded warily, not sure if her interest was good, bad, or mere curiosity.

At least she was smiling as she said, "Then I guess that makes you the prince of the town, huh?"

Henry grinned, answering, "Something like that."

"Then I guess I get to say that I've been rescued by Prince Charming!" Aubrey teased.

"I'm hardly Prince Charming!" Henry objected.

"No, you're not, because the mayor's son is Prince Charming's grandson, right?"

"Um… yeah," he said, surprised that she knew this.

She must have seen that surprise in his eyes because she supplied, "Everybody in town knows who you guys are at least by name."

"But it sounds like you've taken a crack at trying to figure out my family tree - you're a brave lady."

"I'd like to think so," Aubrey laughed, and Henry couldn't help but notice that, though her eyes were a nondescript light brown, they were sparkling in a way that was definitely… nice. And then she was saying, "Well, thanks again for your help, Prince Henry," and remembering, "Oh, hey, my friends are waiting for me outside! I've got to go."

"That's fine. Me too, actually," Henry recalled his own agenda suddenly.

He walked with her to the exit and held the door open for her, prompting her to ask, "Are you sure you're not the actual Prince Charming?"

"I'm sure," Henry said with a smile. "Besides, a Prince's grandson would be a… marquess, I think."

"But you're also the Evil Queen's son, right? So where does that leave you?" Aubrey teased. "As a prince - so I say you're just the next Prince Charming."

"I'll make sure I tell my grandfather that."

Aubrey laughed again as she turned to walk away, calling over her shoulder, "Thanks again, Prince Charming! I'll see you around."

"See you." Henry shook his head as he turned and spotted David's car nearby in the parking lot.

"Hi," David said slowly when Henry opened the passenger side car door and threw his backpack into the backseat.

"Hi," Henry replied suspiciously, sliding into the shotgun seat.

"What's up?" David asked with a grin as he backed out of his parking space and left the school.

"Nothing," Henry shrugged, asking, "Why?"

"Who's the girl?" David asked teasingly.

"I don't know," Henry shrugged again. "Her name's Aubrey Freeman. We just met - she got a little tangled up in some of the set rigging and I helped her down." David looked at Henry sideways, that same teasing smirk on his face, and Henry repeated, "I don't know her! We just met."

"Okay, I hear you," David said. "It just made me think of your grandma is all. Besides, a girl who looked as pretty as her… you'd notice. I know that _I've _noticed that you like blondes. Remember Ava?"

"Hansel and Gretel? You mean that thing _seven years ago_? When I was _ten_?"

"Point taken," David laughed.

"Besides, you only saw her from the back. Skinny and blonde doesn't mean perfect face."

"Who said anything about perfect?"

"Her eyes are a dull brown, just so you know," Henry said, and he bit back against telling him that her eyes were attractive more because of her sparkle than anything else.

David laughed anyway, and Henry could've slapped himself, if for nothing else other than his overactive thoughts - very overactive. Infatuation like this was fleeting, he'd learned, and unless he decided to seek her out and get to know her better (_should he_?) it was also pointless.

And that was that.

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><p>Granny's was busy with the last of the after school crowd when David and Henry found a table.<p>

Once Ruby had come over and taken their orders - two chocolate cones - grandfather and grandson indulged in a moment of people-watching before David asked in a tone full of amusement, "Hey, Henry, isn't that…what was her name?"

"Aubrey," Henry said, spotting the girl in question at the same time as she saw him.

"Hey, Prince Charming!" she called out.

David raised his eyebrows, asking, "What did she just call you?" Henry ignored his grandfather's question and waved Aubrey over - somewhat against his better judgment, considering David's presence, although he found that he was willing to risk further teasing.


	2. Chapter 2

**I am plastering an "AU-ish" disclaimer on this thing, if only for the fact that, as mentioned in this chapter, for the sake of this story Neal is still alive and with Emma. Anywho, onto the story! Enjoy!:) **

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><p>"Did you miss me so much that you had to hunt me down?" Aubrey asked Henry with a smile as she took initiative of her own and sat down at the third chair at the table.<p>

"Guess it's just fate," Henry replied with a smile, rising to the occasion and returning her admittedly flirtatious teasing, David or none.

"What are we going to do about it?" she asked, arching an eyebrow.

"Um… Well, it is Friday. Do you want to meet back here at six, maybe?"

Aubrey grinned. "Yeah; I'd like that."

"Great," Henry answered, barely managing to keep from stammering.

Aubrey grinned, nodding as she mimicked - almost bashfully - "Great," before she receded back to her friends' table, giving him a small wave.

"Well then," David said with a smile once Aubrey had turned her attention elsewhere. "What were you saying about blondes being _so _seven years ago?"

"I did not say that! And even if I had, I wouldn't have said it _like that_."

"No," David agreed with a laugh, "You wouldn't have. You have picked some more articulate way to say that she was unattractive."

"I never said that she was unattractive."

"You kind of did," David grinned.

"Well, what else was I supposed to say? You were bugging me about a girl that I don't even know!" Henry paused, suddenly paling as he realized, "I just set up a date with a girl that I don't know - for two hours from now! What am I supposed to do?"

"Why not go?"

"How can you say that? You throw fits over Mom's boyfriends!"

"No, I threw a fit - past tense - over your mother being with Hook before your dad came back, and that appears to be a different situation entirely."

"It _appears _to be, but you don't really know, do you? For all we know, she could be serial killer or something."

"Your mother would have heard if Storybrooke had a serial killer on the loose," David replied, still grinning as he licked his cone before saying, "I think you should go. Who knows?" he teased, "It might just be fate."

When Henry kicked him under the table, David only laughed before suggesting, "Then think about it this way: if anything goes wrong, Red's going to be right here, and Mr. Gold is just down the road."

"I can't believe that I'm going to do this," Henry moaned.

"Come on," David said, slapping his grandson on the shoulder as he stood. "Are you ready to go? I want to drop you off before long. I've got some business that I want to take care of, and you have a date to get ready for."

"Or regret even agreeing to," Henry muttered, standing up.

"Oh, don't regret it before it even happens! I don't think you'd have suggested it to begin with if you thought there was actually something fishy about her. I trust your judgment, Henry; you should too."

Henry shrugged, mumbling an unconvinced "yeah" as he moved to follow his grandfather out, but when Aubrey caught his eye and waved as he left, he couldn't help smiling at her and returning the gesture.

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><p>"Hey, Gold, are you here?" David called out, stepping into Rumplestiltskin's pawn shop after dropping Henry off.<p>

"Almost always," Rumplestiltskin answered, coming out from the back of the shop. "What can I do for you?"

"I…" David laughed. "This is probably going to sound ridiculous, but Henry's got a date tonight that he's pretty nervous about."

"And…?" Gold drawled with raised eyebrows.

"And I was wondering if you could… you know, look into the future for him."

"For _him_? You're nervous about this too," Gold pointed out, narrowing his eyes knowingly. David winced, assuming that - since Gold had called his bluff - he was going to turn him down, but then the man behind the counter asked simply, "What's this girl's name?"

"Aubrey Freeman."

Gold nodded, saying, "I can close up a little early tonight, I suppose, if we're all going to be so worried for the boy. I'll look into the little missy's future and see what there is to see; it should be easy enough. You'll have to give me some time though - only a half hour at most, I think."

"That'll work; Henry leaves in an hour and a half."

Gold nodded and began to close up shop, effectively dismissing David when he turned his back to him as he replied, "Good."

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><p>"Hello, darling," Belle said, meeting him at the entryway with a smile when he came into their home. "You're home a bit early, aren't you?"<p>

"Hello - and yes," Rumple answered, giving her a quick kiss before he explained, "Mr. Nolan's asked me to look into something for him."

"Look into the future?" Belle said slowly, eyebrows rising.

"Just so far as something going on this evening," Rumple soothed, divesting himself of his suit jacket and even his tie and shoes as he made his way towards the basement. "I'll be back up soon."

As he'd expected her to, Belle stopped at the top of the stairs and went to start making supper as he set to work

…And emerged over four hours later.

"Is something wrong?" Belle asked the obvious when he burst into the kitchen all that time later, all at once trying to shrug on his suit jacket, straighten his tie, and tug on his shoes, eyes wild with worry the whole while. "Rumple! What's going on?"

"Henry!" Rumple threw over his shoulder as he darted for the door of their home. "I have to catch Henry!"

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><p>Rumple pounded on the door of the Nolan's residence, and when Sheriff Swan swung the door open, he asked instantly, "Henry?"<p>

"He's not here," Emma answered with a perplexed expression, gesturing for him to come in. "He went on a date, and called me afterwards to say that he was staying at Regina's for the night."

"What's wrong, Papa?" Bae asked, halfway forcing his father into a seat at the table.

"I missed him?" Rumple hissed. "The date is entirely over?"

His son nodded and Mr. Nolan repeated Bae's question when he asked anxiously, "What's wrong, Gold?"

Rumple forced himself to steady his breathing before he answered, "I looked into what you asked me to."

"Is… does - however you put it - something go wrong?"

"Only his whole life!"


	3. Chapter 3

"I can't believe I just missed him!" Rumple seethed, visibly shaken.

"Is there something that we can do, then?" Mr. Nolan asked anxiously.

"Not likely; things have already been set in motion."

"If my grandson is going to die, I'm going to stop it from happening whatever the cost!" David burst out.

"I never said he was going to _die_!"

"How else does your 'whole life' go wrong?" Snow White asked.

Rumple sighed in something that wasn't quite defeat - not yet. Though his mind was racing to find ways to stop this, his subconscious already knew that there was no way to do so. Things were set in motion, and even just this far into it, there was nothing that he could do for awhile.

"There's nothing to be done for now," Rumple answered, standing and heading for the door. "We'll discuss this again more than likely."

"'Again' when?" Sheriff Swan inquired a little fiercely.

"I don't know," Rumple answered, feeling a slither of irritation. "I didn't have time to look that closely!"

"Is my son going to be okay?" Bae asked slowly, his gaze burning a hole in the back of Rumple's head until father turned to son.

"Yeah…" Rumple smiled slowly as for the first time that truth really hit him. "I confess that I looked a bit farther than I was asked to, and I can certainly say that he does turn out quite a bit better than the lot of us… but I'd rather you didn't mention to him that I know these things; I'd say that's more my place to tell him I know if it ever does need to be said."

The others agreed, and as Rumple opened the door to let himself out, Bae double-checked, "You're sure he's alright?"

"For now, yes."

And then Gold made himself leave before he said something he might regret telling too soon.

There was nothing that they could do. That wasn't a feeling that Rumple was used to, and he didn't like it, but there was no use in hurting the others this way too… not when they couldn't help the situation anymore than he could.

Just because he could look into the future didn't mean that he could control it – and it appeared that Henry had already made his choice, unwittingly though that might have been.

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><p>Henry was having a seriously off day. Within the past twelve hours, he had done <em>nothing <em>he might traditionally do. Six p.m. had found him going on a date with Aubrey – a girl he had seen around his school, but had never before met. That date had gone magnificently, and had ended up with him _lying _to his parents. Not to only his adoptive mother, which he'd done before, but to his biological parents, and to his grandparents too, for that matter. And why had he lied to them, you ask? Well… suffice to say that he knew of that abandoned cabin where his grandparents had found shelter once… and there was just something about Aubrey, and the… getting caught up in the moment. So he'd lied, they'd gone, they'd done it, and now it was six a.m. and he and Aubrey were slowly waking up, still lying together in the cabin's rickety old bed.

That giddiness from the night before was_ gone_, and now Henry was edging pretty close to panicking. What the heck had he done?! This _was not _him! He didn't do things like this! Ever!

He shot upright and flung the covers off, already mentally berating himself. Why? Why had he done this? Why Aubrey? What was it about her? What was he supposed to tell all those people he'd lied to in order to come here with her? How was he supposed to sweep all of this under the rug? How was he supposed to manage to cover it up?

Aubrey suddenly sprang out of the bed with a ragged gasp, causing Henry to do the same, and for a long, motionless moment, they just stood on opposite sides of the bed, staring in shock at one another. Still practically in sync, they both noticed their lack of clothes and there was a sudden mad scramble for said clothing.

Having righted themselves, it was another long, painful minute before they managed to look at one another, though the eye contact was only fleeting. Henry sank down onto the edge of the bed, and Aubrey wandered over to stand in front of the cabin's only window, her back to him.

"Henry," she said suddenly, a shaken sense of urgency in her voice. "Henry, come here; something's wrong."

Henry's brow furrowed, but he obligingly rose from the bed and went to stand beside her. Looking out the window, he could only barely believe what he saw – and he was pretty used to believing the impossible.

"It's not summer anymore," Aubrey pointed out.

"This…" Henry said slowly. "Is not Storybrooke."

"Then where are we?!"

Henry took a deep breath and turned away from the window when for the first time his frazzled brain picked up on the fact that there were bars on the window. Taking in their meager surroundings – the only thing in the room was a pallet with a pillow on top of it and a rack of dresses – he realized, "We are in a dungeon… Hey, the door's open!"

And then their movements were fevered once again, fleeing the dungeon, not noticing that they were hand in hand as they stumbled up the stairs and throughout… wherever they were, trying to take it all in – and find a way out. They made their way through a wild maze of staircases and halls until they finally reached an exit, through which Aubrey promptly dragged him. The edge of a courtyard led directly to a road. They began to follow it, still at a run, and kept running until they couldn't breathe, stumbling and desperate to get back to Storybrooke – but still obviously no closer to that goal.

"You know," Aubrey gasped raggedly when they finally gave up and collapsed in the middle of the road. "Outside of 'a dungeon,' you never told me where we are."

On his knees on the dirt road, hands covering his face, Hentry struggled to catch his breath, and when he was able to breathe again, he stood shakily to his feet and did a slow one-eighty, forcing himself to _see_, to _think_.

"We… it's… gah!" Henry ran his hands through his hair, spinning in a quick, nearly demented circle when he instantly hit a mental stone wall.


	4. Chapter 4

"Henry, look, listen to me, Henry," Aubrey begged, grabbing his wrists and pulling them away from his face. "I know that there are other worlds, obviously; everyone in Storybrooke knows that, but I don't know how to recognize one of those when I see it. Not out of the blue, not when I'm dropped into it. Storybrooke is all that I know – and a little village in the Enchanted Forest where I lived before the curse-"

A flash of recognition – from his book, if from nowhere else – hit Henry upside the head, and he interrupted Aubrey by screaming, "The Enchanted Forest!"

"We're in the Enchanted Forest?" Aubrey asked, and now that the two of them had some piece of information to grasp onto, they both became calm enough for their thoughts to be reasonably coherent.

Henry nodded quickly, looking around again as he said, "I've seen this place in my book… I think we're on the queen's highway." He did another, slower turn and looked back the way they'd come to see a mansion blocking the skyline. "And _that_ is-"

"Where we woke up, right?"

"Yes, but that's also, I think, the Dark Castle."

"That sounds inviting," Aubrey snorted, and Henry smiled a little at the stab at loosening up the tension that was dripping from this situation.

"I'm sure it's not that bad; after all, it belonged to my grandpa."

"Considering that it's called the Dark Castle and that one of your grandparents is the Dark One, do I want to ask which grandparent it belonged to?"

"Yes, it belonged to Rumplestiltskin," Henry nodded patiently, "But it's also the one place that I can see to go back to. So, unless you want to take our chances on getting lost in the Enchanted Forest, I suggest we go back there while we get this figured out."

Aubrey sighed, apparently coming to the conclusion that he was right, and agreed, "Okay, come on then."

Though her voice was reasonably steady, considering their sudden and wild change of circumstances, her hand was trembling when she reached out to him – so what was he to do but take her hand in his as they walked back the way they had come?

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><p>"What do you mean, my son is 'gone'?" Regina screeched. "Gone where? How could you let this happen?!"<p>

"I got distracted with looking at his future and lost track of the time while trying to figure out what was actually going on in what I was seeing," Rumple replied, looking around at the group in Regina's office.

"You were _looking into his future_, and you still managed to screw it up?" Regina snapped. "How did that happen? I thought you couldn't see into the future of those you cared about? And _where is my son_?"

"It was a very telling thread that I grasped onto when Mr. Nolan gave me that task; I learned a surprising lot, even though I'm still trying to untangle the vast majority of what I saw. And I can't see Henry's future directly, no, but I looked into the life of Aubrey Freeman and saw it that way. He and Aubrey… are… connected. And… as for where they are at…" Here Rumple barely managed not to wince. "I have reason to believe that they're in Mist Haven."

"The Enchanted Forest?" Emma gasped, while Regina screeched again, Bae threw his head back with a groan, and Snow White burrowed into her husband's arms.

Belle took one of Rumple's hands into her own as he added, "More specifically, the Dark Castle."

"I am going to kill you," Regina seethed succinctly, locking her black eyes onto him like a predator observed its prey.

Belle nervously tightened her grip on his hand as the Nolans stepped between Regina and her target. "Come on, Regina," Snow coaxed. "We all know that this wasn't anyone's fault - accept for maybe Henry's."

Regina's fury turned onto her step-daughter then as she bit out, "Do not tell me who's fault you think this is; he's _my _son."

"And our grandson!" Mr. Nolan snapped.

"And mine," Rumple added.

"Point being," Emma called out, loudly gaining their collective attention. "That we're all Henry's family, and that means that we're all concerned for his safety - and with getting him back."

"And how do you propose we do that, oh Dark One?" Regina snarled.

Rumple sighed, admitting, "I don't know - but I promise all of you, no matter how long it takes, I will find a way."

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><p>"Aubrey, it <em>will <em>be okay," Henry said, watching from a seated position as the blonde girl paced anxiously across the sitting room. "They'll find us, I promise."

"Do you have any of Antoine's magic beans with you?" she asked suddenly.

"No. And with the hailstorm that came through Storybrooke last month…"

Aubrey said what he didn't want to: "There are currently _no beans in Storybrooke _either_."_

"They _will _find a way to get to us," Henry repeated passionately.

"What if that way is waiting a whole year until there's an entirely new crop of beans?" Aubrey asked shakily, her mad pacing stopping as she dropped to the floor beside him.

"Then we hang tight here for a year," Henry answered in a tone that was much calmer than he actually felt at that idea.

"How are we supposed to survive for an entire year, may I ask? No one has lived in your grandpa's castle for forever; there's no food here or anything, and this place is a veritable pig sty."

"Nah, it's just been thoroughly looted is all. A good autumn cleaning should solve that problem."

"And what about the whole 'no food' problem? Since it looks like we're stranded here until further notice, I mean."

"I'm… not sure yet. If you'll start cleaning up, I'll start looking around."

Aubrey objected with a sharp "I-" and then cut herself off, nodding hesitantly instead.

"What is it?" Henry asked carefully, standing to his feet.

"I… don't want to be by myself…"

"Then stay with me," he suggested with a smile, offering her a hand to help her to her feet. "I'm going to start in this room anyway."

Aubrey smiled shakily and accepted the assistance, asking, "What are we going to do?"

"Look for a vault," Henry answered with certainty, ignoring the fact that she had yet to let go of his hand.

She repeated a little incredulously, "A vault?"


	5. Chapter 5

"M-hm," he replied, beginning to slide his free hand along the stone walls as he explained, "Back in Storybrooke my mom had a vault where she kept her most valuable possessions."

"Magic things, you mean?"

"Yeah. And I've overheard Mr. Gold mention having one here in this castle."

"What does it mean for us if we find it - his vault? I doubt he'd keep canned carrots in there. Canned lizard eyes, maybe, but not carrots."

"Hopefully it means gold. Look at where I was sitting."

Aubrey raised her eyebrows when she asked, "Is that…?"

"His spinning wheel? Yes."

"Wouldn't he want that with him in Storybrooke?"

"Why?" Henry asked. "He's got plenty of rent money coming in. The only time I know of that he's used that particular spinning wheel is when…"

"Zalena," Aubrey filled in the blank. "Okay, so we have a magic spinning wheel, but do you know how to use it?"

"No."

"Then I guess it won't be magic for us. Although…" she let go of Henry's hand and went to kneel in front of a small cabinet on the other side of the room. "I wonder where he kept the gold once he spun it?" She tugged the resisting cabinet door open and grinned at her find, declaring, "Found it."

"You found gold?"Aubrey turned to him, triumphantly holding up twin fistfuls of slender gold chains. "Awesome!"

"Except for the fact that I'm hungry and we can't exactly eat gold."

"No, but we can go into town and buy food."

"Town?" Aubrey repeated skeptically, looking down at their clothes. "In this getup?"

"Well, surely there's got to be clothes here somewhere, right?" He paused before asking, "I am right in thinking that the road that we were on earlier leads to a town, right?"

Aubrey cocked her head to the side, thinking for a second before she nodded uncertainly. "I think so – if my brain's not too scrambled to think clearly, that is."

"Then I guess we'll just have to take that chance."

"Once we find clothes," Aubrey reminded him, standing to her feet as she wound a strand of the gold into a bracelet and slid it onto her wrist. "Where do you think we should start looking?"

Henry bit his lip, considering before he answered, "There are – what did you count? – four levels to the castle?"

"Five counting the dungeons." Light flew into her eyes as she recalled, "Hey, wait a second; there were dresses in the dungeon!"

"That doesn't solve the problem for me, though."

"Well… I could just go into town by myself," she suggested hesitantly.

"That doesn't seem like a good idea."

"Do we have a choice right now? I'm not willing to spend all day looking for Enchanted-Forest-esc clothes when I could just go myself. It's not even half a mile away; I'll be back by noon."

"You're sure," Henry asked with narrowed eyes.

Aubrey nodded and the two of them started back towards the dungeon, going together without either one of them having to say that the dungeons were a place that they didn't want to go alone. She grabbed the plainest of the dresses and gave Henry a look that demanded he leave, to which he quickly complied, standing a little farther down the cool hallway until Aubrey emerged, now wearing clothing that was appropriately "Enchanted-Forest-esc."

"I seriously forgot how much I hated dresses," she muttered as they traipsed back up the stairs.

"Sorry," Henry answered, not knowing how exactly he was supposed to respond to that – or to the fact that, despite what she said, Aubrey was obviously worried at the idea of going into town by herself. However, he was a little afraid that she might just hurt him if he suggested such a thing out loud.

Aubrey brushed it away with a listless flick of her fingers, asking as they stepped up into what was the kitchen, "What do you think I need to take with me?"

"I'm going to guess that you've already got enough gold on your wrist – although you should probably put that into a pouch or something instead of wearing it out in the open like that – and then maybe take a basket to carry things back in."

From off of the kitchen table, he picked up just such a thing and handed it to her and she took it, asking, "What about my shoes? I have a feeling Nikes wouldn't go over well. Barefoot for me, huh?"

"That'll work," Henry shrugged before the two of them made their way up another flight of stairs to the main exit of the castle. "Here." He grabbed a green cloak from the coat stand by the door and drew it around her shoulders. She shakily smiled her thanks as he tied the strings and asked, "Are you sure you're okay with this?"

Aubrey nodded, reassuring him, "Yeah, I'll be okay."

"Okay," Henry employed a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes and watched her walk towards town until he could no longer see her.

Shutting the door against the chilly autumn air, he decided to go look around some more and see what he could find that might be of use to them. He had noticed while Aubrey was changing into the dress in the dungeon that that particular level of the house was empty save for what was in the one cell – Belle's old "bedroom," he suspected, not that he'd bothered to tell Aubrey that. The kitchen – which was on the same level as the servants' quarters – had looked like it might be able to be coaxed into something that might decently resemble working order – after a good cleaning, that was. The level he was on now contained a dining room, sitting room, ball room, and a number of other random offices. The fourth level, upon further inspection, revealed more offices and bedrooms, as well as some men's clothing in one of those rooms – Rumplestiltskin's most likely, although they might fit Henry should he ever want them. The fifth level had confused Henry at first – it had been perfectly, in fact painstakingly, set up as quarters for children – until he'd realized. This fifth level would've been Bae's had he ever lived here.


	6. Chapter 6

Despite searching throughout the entire house for close to an hour, he hadn't managed to find the one thing that he'd actually been _looking _for – his grandfather's vault. Slipping from yet another bedroom, Henry noticed yet another flight of stairs at the end of the hallway and climbed them, finding himself in… a library. And it looked as if it was an add-on to the original castle – for Belle, he realized with a smile. Rumplestiltskin had this room built for Belle – and that had only been less than thirty-five years ago, although the looks of this place lent itself to a much earlier era.

Might Rumplestiltskin have left any clues in this room as to the location of his vault? Henry cast his gaze around the room, his eyes falling to a huge book that was open on nearby table. Going up to the table, he first noticed the key-shaped hole cut into the pages and then, when he picked up the book, the skull on its spine. Shuddering, he set the book back down and left the library behind, humming no tune in particular just to ward off the stifling, lonely silence of the huge castle. Maybe his wariness to let Aubrey leave had actually been as much for his sake as it was hers?

Finding his way back down to the kitchen, he began to clean the room up a little just to keep his hands – and more importantly, his mind – busy. Scooping debris from the floor, he put them into the fireplace and managed to start a fire to ward off the slight chill seeping from off of the stone walls. A thought came suddenly to mind and he raced back up to the coat stand by the exit, putting on the one cloak that remained there – a maroon thing that must've belonged to Rumplestiltskin – before he went back down the kitchen and resumed his work.

When Aubrey returned just before noon as predicted, he met her at the door, declaring that it was safe to eat in the now-decently-clean kitchen.

"What about cooking in it?" Aubrey asked as she divested herself of the cloak she'd worn to town. "All I could find was raw things – raw vegetables, meat, and fruit, and some milk and eggs. And something that might have been headcheese that I refused to touch."

Henry grinned, happy just to have someone back in the castle with him as he took the basket from her arms and led her down to the kitchen.

"Carrying a girl's groceries, are you?" she teased him as he set the basket down on the table. "You really are Prince Charming, aren't you?"

"Nope, that's my grandpa."

"Ah, that's right, you're _Marquess _Charming." Henry laughed as they began to unpack the basket and Aubrey commented, "You did a good job cleaning up down here."

"Thanks – although I still wouldn't eat off the floor or anything."

"Well, maybe – if we're here long enough – I'll scrub the floors down or something."

Henry saw bite her lip at the idea of being here for that long – he wanted to do the same thing – so he asked her, "How was town?"

"'Town' is a very generous word for it," she answered, gratefully grabbing onto the new topic. "It's a lot like the village I lived in before the first curse – and it was surprisingly loud for such a small place. All the kids and animals, I guess…" she trailed off and a silent moment passed before she asked hesitantly, "Henry?"

His eyes snapped up from the food on the table at the tone of her voice, knowing what question was coming as he asked, "Yeah?"

"Do you really think we'll be here a whole year?"

Henry took a deep breath as he leaned his palms against the table, answering carefully, "At worst, yes – but I also think that they'll do everything in their power to find us before then."

"Do they even know where we are?"

There was a frantic edge creeping back into her voice that Henry didn't like and didn't know how to handle, but he answered honestly, "I don't know… and I wouldn't think so. Although… Mr. Gold can look into your future and see, maybe."

"You think he would?"

"Yeah – like I said, anything they can do to get us back."

"Anything they can do to get _you _back," Aubrey corrected with a dry smile.

"What about your family?" Henry asked as they started to eat.

"My family…" Aubrey said slowly with a depreciating roll of her eyes. "You know, I don't really have any idea. My father died in the ogre wars…and my mother…" she pursed her lips, obviously growing hesitant to speak.

"You don't have to tell me," Henry said softly.

She shook her head and continued, looking down at her food as she hopped up to sit on the edge of the table, "She remarried… and my stepfather wasn't what we thought he was. He drank a lot, and he would… hurt her sometimes when he came home drunk. Mother and I already had a long-standing agreement that when he came home soused, I was supposed to go out to the barn until she came to get me – usually once he'd passed out. He was an angry drunk – such an angry drunk." She swallowed harshly, saying, "Even out in the barn I could hear when he would scream at her, hit her. One night, I got tired of listening to it, and I charged in there and tried to stop him." A deep sigh and then, "Of course, he got even angrier and turned on me… and when my mother got between us and tried to stop him from beating me… he took it too far… and she was gone." She'd held herself together remarkably well the whole day during everything that had happened, but the recounting of her mother's death had brought tears to her eyes and redness to her eyes and nose. She finished flatly, "Once he realized what he'd done, my stepfather ran out and when Regina's curse was cast not a week later, he didn't come with it. I've been living with a foster family ever since."

A solitary tear slipped from her eyes and Henry moved closer to her, putting an arm around her shoulders as he said softly, "Hey, it'll be okay." He didn't know what else to say, certainly not when she leaned into him and began to sob, burying her face in his shoulder as she released the stress of it all with her tears. Henry wasn't sure what made him say it; just that he meant it when the words came out of his mouth, "Whatever happens, I'll take care of us."


	7. Chapter 7

He held her until her tears were spent, instinctually wanting to comfort her too much for the embrace to be awkward. Eventually, once she felt ready, Aubrey pulled away and gave him a shaky smile, flushing with embarrassment, and he suddenly realized how unusual telling people about her past must have been for her – how much trust she'd just put in him. "Sorry," she muttered, looking anywhere but at him.

"No, it's okay." He left his hand on her shoulder as he said softly, "Thank you for telling me. You… you can trust me, you know."

She narrowed her eyes a little, studying him for a minute before she said, "Yeah. Yeah, I do know."

They both smiled, letting the moment pass as Henry mentioned, "I found some clothes in a couple of the bedrooms that should fit me, so if we need to go to town again, I can go with you."

"Great. Did you have any luck finding the vault?"

Henry shook his head, feeling a twinge of frustration at that.

"Then I guess we'll just have to use the rest of the gold sparingly – just in case… we're here for awhile."

"Right." They tucked what remained of their food back into the basket and left it on the table, heading back upstairs as he asked, "So, what do you want to do now?"

"Do you want to show me the rest of this place? I didn't get to look around."

He agreed easily and they spent the rest of the day combing the dilapidated castle, barn, and gardens, allowing themselves to get lost in the opulence of it and – if only for a few hours – to forget about the world outside of the Dark Castle.

But night inevitably fell, and with it came a new sort of darkness and cold – both of a mind-game sort. They'd ended up in the sitting room, Aubrey curled up in the chair in front of the fireplace while Henry toyed with his grandfather's spinning wheel and some straw that he'd found in the barn.

"This place is creepy," Aubrey stated.

"Maybe we could think of it as more… 'gothic romantic'?"

"Like Heathcliffe and Jane?"

"Jane Eyre? That's two different books."

"Well, I'm not exactly a 'classics' sort of girl!"

"Let me think," Henry said with a small smile as he thought it over. "You're not a vampire sort of girl. Divergent series, maybe? No, I've got it – Suzanne Collins."

"Modernized fairytales, and don't you dare judge me," Aubrey answered, leaning around the arm of the chair to peer at him through the dancing, orange firelight.

So Henry bit back any of the first responses that came to his mind and said instead, "Well, when I said gothic romantic, I was thinking more of Beauty and the Beast anyway."

Aubrey laughed out loud, the sound strange and wonderful in the dark room, replying, "Perfect."

"It really is," Henry pointed out, watching as a gaping yawn transformed her face. "Her name is Belle for a reason."

"I wonder how many people have pointed that out to him?"

"He knows it without the reminders." He narrowed his eyes as she tried and failed to stop a second yawn. "Hey, are you okay?"

"Just tired," she answered, shaking her head as if to red her body from its tiredness. "I don't think I'll be able to sleep in this place, though."

"Sure you can. I didn't even bother to count how many bedrooms are in this place."

"Do any of them have fires already in the fireplaces?"

"I didn't start any, no."

"Then they're all going to be chillier than in this room – and don't you dare suggest sleeping in front of the kitchen's fireplace." Henry opened his mouth only to slam it closed with a smile when she added, "And don't say anything about a modernized version of Cinderella, either."

He stood from the spinning wheel and grabbed the drape that was covering a mirror in the corner, moving to spread the drape at her feet and lay down on it as he asked, almost hesitantly, "Am I allowed to ask if you think you'd sleep better right here?"

She surveyed the setup skeptically before she unfolded herself from the chair and laid down beside him, snuggling in close to him when he clumsily wrapped the drape around them both. He prayed she couldn't see his face as memories from the night before came flooding back to his mind – however long ago those memories seemed to have taken place.

"Henry?" Aubrey asked in a carefully uncertain – scared – whisper.

"Yeah?"

"We're going to be okay, aren't we?"

"Of course," he answered, giving her a gentle squeeze and pretending it was just for warmth's sake. "Remember? I'll take care of us."

She smiled again at that, her eyelids already beginning to droop, and Henry wasn't prepared for her "thank you" or for the sleepy kiss that was dropped onto his mouth just before her breathing evened out. He froze, holding her close for a good half hour until he was sure that she wouldn't stir if he moved, then got slowly to his feet and went back to the spinning wheel, sitting at it again.

He knew full-well that without a portal you couldn't get from one world to another, and to his knowledge there were no means for making a portal beyond the beans that Antoine grew in Storybrooke – and this year's crop of beans had recently been destroyed by an unusually fierce, but apparently non-magical, hailstorm. So there were no more beans – and no more portals – until next year. Which meant no getting home for a full year. Henry had seen how much gold was in that cabinet and he knew for a fact that it wouldn't last for a year. That had been his original thought in trying to find the Dark One's vault. Those things were above and beyond valuable, and they would need the money. But gold was just as valuable – and much safer to put out in the open – if Henry could figure out how to spin it, that was.


	8. Chapter 8

Henry took a deep breath, forcing himself to think despite his exhaustion, and remember what he'd been told about magic. Emotion. Magic was about emotion. So he threaded straw into the spinning wheel and got comfortable with spinning it before he exhaled slowly and let loose all of his pent up emotions from the day.

The completely mixed rush of emotions at waking up beside Aubrey and all that entailed, the panicked terror of realizing that they'd been transported from Storybrooke to the Enchanted Forest, the unease at being in the castle, the surprising rush of anger and protectiveness he'd felt when Aubrey had told him of her parents' deaths… The kiss that she'd given him just before falling asleep. All of it was silently poured out, as if into the very strands that he was spinning, and when he truly paid attention to his handiwork for the first time in awhile, he realized that he'd done it. He'd spun straw into gold, and a long strand of the precious metal had formed a pile on the floor beside the wheel – enough to replace what Aubrey had spent today.

He broke it off and quietly put the newly-formed gold in the cabinet along with what had been there earlier. His insides shaking at what he'd just been able to do; Henry crossed the room and slid back down onto the floor beside Aubrey, staring into the flames in the fireplace until his body's need for sleep overcame his racing mind.

* * *

><p>"Good morning, Marquess."<p>

Henry woke up confused, brushing a hand over his eyes just to make sure his surroundings remained the same as he sat up. Then the past thirty-six hours came back to him in vicious rush, and he had to fight to keep the contents of his stomach where they belonged.

He must've paled, because Aubrey turned and started towards him from where she'd put a tray on the table in the middle of the room, asking, "Are you okay?"

He closed his eyes for a second, rasping out, "Yeah."

"Liar." Aubrey accused, going back to the tray and then bringing him a cup from it. "Here, drink it," she ordered, crouching down beside him and shoving the crystal into his hands. "It's just water." She sat down cross-legged in front of him, watching him intently until the tumbler's contents were gone.

"Thanks," Henry said, setting the glass aside.

"You're welcome," she said, still eyeing him as if to assess how well he felt now. "I've got some of the fruit I bought yesterday on the tray if you want something to eat."

"No, I don't think so."

She smiled sadly, admitting solemnly, "I know; me too."

He didn't know exactly what she meant by that, but then he did. She was here with him and feeling everything that he was. They were going through every ounce of this together.

"I thought I was supposed to take care of us?" he said, trying for chipper and not quite reaching it.

Aubrey shook her head. "You let me fall apart yesterday, so I think I owe you the same thing."

Henry shook his head, saying as much to himself as to her, "No, not today."

"Tomorrow then," she answered with a sad smile, both of them clambering to their feet. "So," she brushed her hands together and took a hair-tie from around her wrist, pulling her blonde waves back into a ponytail, and Henry recognized the look of someone about to get to work. "I've been thinking that if we really believe we're going to be stuck here for a whole year, we're going to need to get this place cleaned up. This room is still kind of trashed – actually, almost everywhere is except for where you cleaned up the kitchen. I think maybe we should start in here, and then get one – or a couple, of course – of the bedrooms cleaned up too. What do you think?"

"Okay. Are you going to want to get the dresses from the dungeon? There's no reason for you to wear just that one that you've got on."

"The rest have so many ruffles – and puffed sleeves."

Henry couldn't help but laugh outright at the absolute look of helpless disgust that warped her features when her nose crinkled and her lips curled up. "If it makes you feel any better, the only pants I've got at my disposal are leather."

She snorted, admitting, "Alright, yeah, that helps."

"You are so supportive!"

"Aren't I?" she laughed, moving across the room to tug open the heavy curtains on one of the windows.

However, the curtain had other ideas, and it didn't budge even when Henry helped her try to tug it to the side.

"I want light in here," Aubrey said, pretending to pout – but Henry got the feeling that she really was desperate to brighten the place up.

He bit his lip, saying, "I'll figure something out if you want to work on something else. I think I saw a ladder in the kitchen yesterday."

"You're right!" she remembered, the brightness in her eyes that had caught his attention the first time he'd met her coming back into her brown orbs at the simple solution.

He smiled, jogging out of the room as he said, "I'll be right back" while silently resolving to find more ways to make her smile. At least it was worth it to lug the heavy wooden ladder up a flight of stairs and into the sitting room… well worth it, actually, unforeseen… repeat in history considered.

He knew the ladder was already rickety, he'd read the book, he knew what could happen – he just hadn't considered that it would… and so it did. She fell off of the stupid ladder, and _of course _he caught her. What else was a gentleman supposed to do?

But when he realized what exactly he'd done, he was so surprised at himself that he nearly dropped her. She squeaked – a rather unusual sound coming from her, he'd bet – and wrapped her arms even tighter around his neck.


	9. Chapter 9

"Are you okay?"he managed, not sure why he hadn't put her on her own two feet yet.

She nodded, asking with slightly raised eyebrows, "Are you?"

"Yeah," he said, stiffly releasing his hold on her.

"Well, thanks for saving me there, Marquess."

Henry smiled shakily, nodding before he turned away and said, "I'm going to go get the broom from the kitchen."

"Wait. Henry, what's wrong? Did I upset you?" Suddenly her hand was on his arm and she was turning him around and making him look into her concerned brown eyes. "Because I really don't want to have my only friend here mad at me."

"It's not you," he assured her. "It's me… and the book."

So saying, he shrugged off her touch and all but ran to the kitchen, leaving her horribly confused. But the funny thing was that he had a feeling that he was even more confused than she was in an entirely different way.

What he didn't see was that the girl he was now sharing this castle with was just as confused as he was – in exactly the same way.

* * *

><p>A month passed, and the truth really started to set in. Until further notice, Henry and Aubrey were stuck in the Enchanted Forest. During that time, both nothing happened and many things happened.<p>

Despite cleaning up a couple of the bedrooms on the fourth floor, neither one of them were really willing to sleep alone, so they bedded down with one another on the floor of the now-clean sitting room, curled together amidst a pile of blankets in front of the fireplace. They moved the clothes that would fit them into the bedrooms they'd cleaned, including Belle's dresses – and shoes of hers that they'd discovered – and forgot that the dungeons were even a part of the castle. Seeing a need for it, they salvaged wood from the worst-off of the buildings on the estate to fix up one of the barns and bought a cow, rooster, a handful of chickens, and – at Aubrey's insistence – a turkey because "if we have to spend Thanksgiving here, I at least want a turkey dinner." It was a momentous amount of work to do in only one month, but they chose the backbreaking tasks over actually having to think about being so far from Storybrooke, and by the time Thanksgiving Day finally rolled around, they had the entirety of the castle habitable.

However, the holiday itself wasn't quite what they had hoped to make it.

The day before Thanksgiving, Henry had been the one to buck up and behead the turkey, but he'd left the bird to Aubrey's disposal after that, and she'd done a good enough job of feathering it.

They both started into the kitchen early the next morning, suddenly realizing that beyond what they'd done with the thing yesterday, they had no idea how to degut or cook it. But they did their best and ended up leaving the bird to sit in a covered cauldron in the fireplace, hoping that it might work something like a crock-pot, before going on a walk across the overgrown lands around the castle.

"It's starting to get cold out," Aubrey commented, shivering as she tugged her green cloak even closer about her.

Henry moved closer to Aubrey as they walked, answering, "We've been here a whole two months."

"Winter's going to be fun," she said dryly.

He sighed, saying wearily, "Yeah."

"We should try starting something of a garden once winter's over." This as she stopped and looked out over what had once been an extensive vegetable garden. Henry stopped behind her and followed her gaze as she added, "We might harvest some things from it before we're able to go home – and if nothing else, it's something else to do around here. Besides taking care of the animals, what few chores there are for the house, and going into town every other day, there's nothing to _do_. And if you suggest that I read one more book from the library, I _will_ scream."

"Well, please don't do that," Henry answered teasingly, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and resting his chin on the top of her blonde head when she leaned back into him.

"I won't," she chuckled. "At least not this time."

"Thank you." He kissed her scalp gently, trying to drive away the homesick thoughts that he knew were running through her head – because they were in his too.

Little gestures such as that had been infrequent at the beginning of their stay here, and more often than not driven by a need for human contact and comfort from the homesickness. But the more they happened, the more they started to mean something that was less about being alone and more about being together – and maybe even in love. Nowadays the two of them didn't consider it such a bad thing that they were here alone, just that they were… not in Storybrooke – and in Henry's case, that he wasn't with his family. And even though their closeness – concerning physical touch or otherwise – was no longer considered unusual, it still managed to bring a smile to their faces, which was exactly what Henry was hoping he could get from her –and he did.

"There's my girl," he murmured, catching a glimpse of the corners of her mouth turning up from his position behind her. "Feel better?"

She shrugged noncommittally, turning the tables on him when he said, "This has got to be even worse for you. At least back in Storybrooke you have a real family who must be worried about you."

Henry sighed against her hair, not letting his thoughts go there as he repeated, "But how about you?"

"I just… haven't been feeling well for awhile. Too much stress from everything I think." She tilted her head back to look at his face and, seeing the concern clouding his eyes, smiled lightly, smiling a little as she said, "Don't worry about me; I'll be fine! It's just a stomachache."

Even as the last sentence came out of her mouth, her expression changed and she lurched out of his embrace as the contents of her stomach suddenly ended up on the grass at her feet.


	10. Chapter 10

Henry shot towards Aubrey and gathered her hair away from her face, feeling otherwise helpless as she leaned her palms against her knees and dry heaved, raggedly drawing a breath when her stomach stopped trying to flip itself inside out.

"Come on," Henry said, putting an arm around her shoulders and leading her back the way they'd come. "Let's get you back inside."

"I'm fine," Aubrey complained, trying to shrug his arm away.

Henry dropped his hold on her but left a hand between her shoulder blades and kept steering her back towards the castle with a simple, "Nope. If you're sick, you don't need to be out in this cold air."

"I'm not sick," she whined.

"Uh-huh," he said flatly, having gotten used to dealing with her oftentimes sharp tongue over the past couple of months.

But she was suddenly wrenching away from his touch and turning to face him, brown eyes flashing with something in their depths that registered as being close to fury, as she repeated in a loud, sharp snap, "_I am not sick_."

Before Henry could gather himself enough to respond – or let alone reach out to her – she was already gone and running down the path to town.

Debating whether or not he should go after her, he called out, "Aubrey, wait!"

The words she screamed back at him were harsher, coarser than any he'd had directed at him in his life, and he decided that, yeah, he would give her space and wait for her here.

* * *

><p>Henry was waiting for Aubrey in the sitting room when she trudged in not long after darkness fell in the evening. Sitting in the armchair facing the fireplace, he heard the heavy entrance door creak open and even Aubrey's light footsteps were loud against the stone floor in the otherwise silent castle.<p>

"Hey," he called out softly, hoping she wouldn't try to sneak past the doorway.

She froze for a second before slinking into the room and stopping just inside the doorway, shoulders hunched as she repeated, "Hey."

"You okay?" he asked hesitantly, standing in front of the fireplace so that he could turn to look at her.

She nodded too quickly and said softly, "I'm sorry I yelled at you."

"It's okay," Henry said. "You aren't feeling well; you're allowed to be off-balance. Heck, this whole situation gives anybody a good reason to be off-balance."

She snorted and nodded at her shoes, an ironic sort of expression stealing across her face. "Yeah, this thing is nuts alright."

Eyebrows drawing down into a "v," Henry hazarded, "Is something up? Something that I should know about?"

She shook her head, and again the movement was too quick, but he wasn't about to push it, considering the rest of the day. So he said instead, "Okay. Um, I left you a plate in the kitchen, if you're hungry."

Aubrey shook her head, giving him a soft, "No, thanks. I don't want to chance it" before she said suddenly, "Good night; I'm going to bed."

Henry stood there for a second, confused, as he watched her wheel away and then heard her thunder up the stairs to the fourth level. And for the first time during their stay at the castle, Aubrey was desperate enough to get away from… whatever was going on… that she slept in the bedroom she'd chosen on the fourth level instead of by him.

* * *

><p>Over the next month, Aubrey never quite recovered from whatever she was sick from, and things remained… different… between her and Henry – uncertain and a little tense. They both still cared for one another, Henry knew that much – but he also knew that she was still hiding something from him. He did not, however, know what that was, and it bothered him that his one friend in this place… she didn't trust him.<p>

That was the only conclusion that he could come to. Whatever it was, the fact that Aubrey was hiding something from him meant that she couldn't trust him with it. And he rather desperately wanted to gain that trust.

So he thought hard and he worked harder, and he came up with the best Christmas present for her that he could think of. He spent hours – entire days – up in Belle's library, pouring over the section of books he'd found there that belonged to his grandfather. Books on magic.

He knew for a fact that the blonde he shared this castle with was a spitfire even on the best of days, and on the worst days – of which there had recently been many, thanks to her feeling under the weather – she could be an unholy terror. The best thing he could think to do – admittedly for the both of them – was to heal her, and in the Enchanted Forest, the only way he could think to do that was with magic.

So from Thanksgiving to Christmas, he holed up in the library and learned. To figure out the spells in the spell book – most importantly the healing spells – he used what little Elvish he'd been taught back in Storybrooke and figured out the words he didn't recognize. He concentrated on the project until his head hurt, until his very brain ached – until he was certain that he could help Aubrey instead of hurting her.

Because if he hurt her, he would never – ever – forgive himself.

But then came Christmas morning and the whole matter of convincing her to _let him _help her.

"Good morning," he called out merrily, clattering down the steps into the kitchen, where he knew he would find Aubrey, early riser that she was.

"Morning, Marquess," Aubrey returned, looking over her shoulder at him and letting the corners of her mouth tilt up.

He joined her at the table where she was chopping – "Vegetables already?"

"To put in with the chicken for Christmas dinner."

"Boiled chicken, I assume?" Henry questioned, peering into the cauldron only to find an unexpected surprise – the chicken was submerged in oil. "You're," he said slowly. "Trying to _fry _it? It really must be Christmas!"


	11. Chapter 11

"It _is_ Christmas, remember?" Aubrey tried to smile again, and though it stretched across her face perfectly fine, it _didn't_ reach her eyes. Whatever had been occupying her thought the past month, it was weighing especially heavy on her today. "And, yes, I am _attempting _to fry the chicken. Why not? We've experimented in the kitchen before, and nothing's been burnt down yet."

"So we're going to try even harder today?" he teased with a smile.

Aubrey smirked, moving to elbow him, but he was just as quick to wrap his arms around her, pinning her arms in place and dropping a kiss onto her scalp. He had hoped that the gesture would bring the light back into her eyes for a moment, but it did nothing of the sort. Apparently, he'd only irritated her further, because once again he found her wrenching angrily from his grasp, only, this time he grabbed her wrist before she could run.

The atmosphere in the kitchen dropped by about twenty degrees as he demanded desperately, "Talk to me, Aubrey! And don't tell me that nothing is wrong, because something is, so _please tell me what_."

"I can't!" Aubrey suddenly screamed, eyes welling with tears as she struggled against his unrelenting grip.

"Yes, you can," Henry begged. "Come on, Aubrey, we've already established that we're all one another have here. You can trust me with anything and I'll do whatever I can to help you." His tone became hesitant as he added, "I… I even figured out how to heal whatever's making you sick. That was the best Christmas present I could think of."

The first of her tears slid down her cheek as she blinked slowly, the fight suddenly gone out of her as she whispered, "Oh, Henry… I'm not sick."

"Then what is it?"

He released her wrist and she sank down onto the floor, burying her face in her hands as she began to sob in earnest. He knelt down in front of her and peeled her hands away from her face, much as she'd done to him their first day here.

She tried to bury her face in her own shoulder, still refusing to look at him until he cupped her chin in his hand and turned her eyes towards him, repeating, "Please, beautiful, talk to me."

A ghost of a smile just barely flickered over her face at the endearment before she asked, "You promise me you won't hate me?"

"Of course I won't;" he said gently, taking her hands in his. "Whatever it is, we can get through it together."

Aubrey straightened her spine, threw her shoulders back, and lifted her chin, looking him in the eyes and squeezing his hands as she took a deep breath and said, "Henry, I'm pregnant with your baby."

His grip on her hands faltered and she squeezed them again, asking, "Are you okay, Marquess?"

"Are you?"

"I asked you first."

So he gave her his honest first thought – "No. No, I'm not okay – but I will be." He nodded resolutely as his thoughts slowed down enough to make some measure of sense. "I will be okay, and we will be okay, and I will be here for you no matter what, just like I said I would. I'll be fine, you'll be fine… and so will our baby, I promise. I'll make sure of it. 'Whatever happens, I'll take care of us,' remember? I meant it then and I mean it now – and that definitely includes our baby."

"You're sure?" Aubrey asked hesitantly.

His answer was an instantaneous "yes," the ferocity of which surprised even him.

She looked a little taken aback as she asked, "Aren't you afraid?"

"Yes," Henry nodded, rising to his feet and helping Aubrey to hers. "_But_ my family sports a long line of son-abandoning dads, and I refuse to be one of them."

"What if it's a girl?" Aubrey asked, some of her old brightness lacing her suddenly teasing tone as that same spark returned to her eyes.

Henry laughed out loud, not sure if he was happy or losing his mind or both as he declared, "Then she'll be the most spoiled thing _ever _when we get back to Storybrooke, seeing as she'd be the first girl in my family since my mother on the Charming side, and on my dad's side since I don't even _know _when." He paused, thinking it through before he said, "You know… I think I might like to have a daughter. A daughter."

He pulled Aubrey to him, kissing her in the midst of sudden, crazy giddiness before he took her hands and twirled with her around the kitchen until they were both dissolving into hopeless fits of laughter. Henry sat down on the table and pulled Aubrey down beside him, kissing her again. Looking in her eyes, he saw that the happiness – the sparkle – that he had so missed was back again, and it thrilled him.

"A baby," he repeated, giving her another quick kiss. "We're going to have a baby."

"And you're happy about it?"

"I think so," Henry answered honestly, smiling hesitantly as he asked, "So, are we okay now?"

Aubrey nodded quickly. "If I'm okay with a baby, and you're okay with a baby, then we're okay… as… us, too."

"And what are 'we'?" Henry asked, carefully twining his fingers through hers and searching her eyes hesitantly.

"Well, let's take stock of our circumstances, shall we?" Aubrey asked with a soft grin, scraping the toe of her shoe against the floor as she spoke.

"We're here, in the Enchanted Forest," Henry started. "We're living in the Dark Castle – together – and we're… apparently… going to have a baby."

"It sounds like we're a couple, doesn't it?" Aubrey asked, tilting her head to the side as she studied his face.

Henry smiled again, his free hand going up to run through her hair as murmured, "Yeah, it does." He closed the last of the distance between them, kissing her with a smile before saying, "Merry Christmas, my beautiful Aubrey."

The look on her face made him wonder if she was going to stop smiling before the New Year around as she repeated, "Merry Christmas, Marquess."


	12. Chapter 12

For the first time since Thanksgiving, Henry found himself sleeping with Aubrey at his side, and he loved it. He loved her – really, entirely, this-might-just-be-_true-love _loved her – and that realization had done a number on his stomach – to say nothing of realizing exactly what was in his future now that Aubrey had told him about the baby that was currently nestled underneath her heart. So even though he was lying in a perfectly comfortable bed that he'd started to think of as his own, with his arms once again wrapped around Aubrey, he just couldn't sleep.

So he carefully disentangled himself from her and crept down to his grandfather's spinning wheel as quietly as possible. There had been many a night since coming to this castle that Henry had spent time on this stool while Aubrey slept. At first, he had seen it as something of a necessity. When some gold was spent in the village during the day, he would replace it in their stash overnight. However, after Thanksgiving, he'd found – much like Rumplestiltskin had centuries ago – that the act of spinning was cathartic, and he'd found himself spending more and more time at the wheel under the cover of darkness. There was now more gold in that cabinet than he and Aubrey could ever hope to use in a year, and he was just waiting for her to call him out on it.

That was going to be an interesting conversation – one that he was wary of but ultimately prepared for. Because of that, he didn't bother to consider it for long until he allowed himself to get lost in the spinning and the emotional release that the action practically _required_. After Aubrey's earlier announcement there was a lot for him to get his mind wrapped around, so he didn't climb back into bed until about twenty minutes before Aubrey woke up in the morning.

"Good morning, Marquess," she murmured with a smile when she pulled up the covers on her side of the bed and saw that his eyes were opened into narrow slits as he watched her. Henry mumbled what might have been a greeting and moved to roll over and – hopefully – go back to sleep. However, he was happy to change his plans when Aubrey knelt beside him on the bed and kissed him on the cheek, gently tugging on the shoulder of his nightshirt as she suggested, "If you're awake, you could come help me make breakfast."

"Now why would I do that?" he asked teasingly, cracking an eye back open to look at her.

Aubrey opened her mouth and then closed it, an actual blush stealing into her cheeks – something Henry had yet to see on her face before now – before she admitted in a whisper, "I've missed you."

"I've been here the entire time, beautiful," Henry responded with a smile, sitting up languidly and pulling her into an embrace.

"I've missed _talking _to you – so come on, humor me." She pulled a pouting expression, adding, "You wouldn't really make your _pregnant_… castle-mate face the dank, dark, cold kitchen all alone while you stay in a nice warm bed up here, would you?"

Henry groaned and released her, slinging his legs around the edge of the bed and hauling himself to his feet as he declared, "You're horrible."

"And pregnant – and yet you love me still," Aubrey joked – and then she panicked, realizing that she'd spoken what she thought to be a presupposition. "N-not that I think that–I'm not saying that you do love me, because it's totally-"

Henry rounded the bed with a patient smile on his face and put his hands on her shoulders, cutting her off as he stated with gentle firmness as he held her gaze, "I do love you, Aubrey. I haven't said it before, and we haven't really been easy on each other since we got here, but I do love you, and I will do anything it takes to make this work – being here for however long we must be, having a baby… even once we get back to Storybrooke, Aubrey, I will continue to love you, and I will keep my promise to you. 'Whatever happens, I'll take care of us.' Even in Storybrooke, even with a baby, I will find a way; I promise." Aubrey's eyes were glassy as she leaned into his shoulder, but there was guardedness in her gaze and barely-there stiffness in her spine that Henry didn't like. "Don't you believe me?" he whispered worriedly against her blonde locks.

She nodded rapidly as she pulled back and caught his gaze, murmuring, "I love you too."

"But what?" he queried, still eyeing her.

She shook her head and took his hand, pulling him out of the bedroom and down two flights of stairs into the kitchen. "Here." She handed him a bucket and gestured for him to go get water from the well outside.

"No," Henry said stubbornly. "Something's wrong, and if you really do love me, you're going to tell me what."

Aubrey sighed temperamentally and turned a sharp gaze to him, saying irritably, "Let's make a deal;" Henry snorted, but she continued on as if he hadn't. "You go draw the water and give me two seconds of silence in which to think, and then I'll talk, 'kay?"

"I thought you missed me?"

"Yes, but this conversation – if you really want to have it – requires tact, and that doesn't come easily to me, in case you haven't noticed, so just give me a minute to collect my thoughts before I open my mouth?"

"Okay," Henry agreed, giving her a gentle peck on the lips before he started to leave the kitchen, teasing, "And, yes, I have noticed that tact issue."

He ducked out of the way just before a flying pear could connect with his head and darted outside, chuckling as he obliged Aubrey's request for a minute alone and considered what the topic of the upcoming conversation might be. He was taking the last steps back down into the kitchen when he realized. The "magically appearing" gold that he'd been spinning.


	13. Chapter 13

"Am I in a lot of trouble?" Henry asked hesitantly as he placed the bucket of water on the table.

"No," Aubrey let the word out with a sigh as she straightened her spine and turned to face him. "I just need you to be honest with me about something."

Yup, this was about the extra gold he'd been spinning. "And what's that?"

"You said that you learned healing spells, right?" Henry nodded, getting two challises and pouring water into them for something to do as Aubrey asked, "Then… you've been spinning straw into gold, haven't you? On Rumplestiltskin's spinning wheel?"

Again Henry nodded, not quite trusting whatever words might find their way out of his mouth at the moment.

"When? How come I haven't ever seen you do it? You could've told me, you know."

"I've been doing it at night while you slept… since the first day we were here. And I do know that I could've told you – I know it _now_, but not before then, so I just didn't… and I'm sorry for that."

Aubrey smiled a little – relieved, Henry realized – as she said, "That's alright," and then drily, "I guess we've both been hiding things from each other, haven't we?"

"But no more?" Henry bargained, raising his eyebrows expectantly.

"No more secrets," she repeated resolutely, wrapping her arms around his neck, and when she kissed him there was no guardedness in her, just… love.

* * *

><p>But by the end of April, Henry could tell that Aubrey was hiding something from him again, and he didn't like it. Most of the time she would be fine, but it hadn't become infrequent for her to become withdrawn and… pained. She never said anything about it, and whenever he went to broach the subject, the sharp looks she gave him were always enough to make him reconsider. During those times, he would often find her cradling her growing stomach, so he was left to worry that something might be wrong with not only Aubrey, but possibly their baby as well.<p>

And then he noticed that these mood swings tended to happen after she'd made a trip into the village.

Getting a hunch, Henry did something he hadn't since Aubrey's condition had started to become more apparent, and the next time she went into town, he went with her – despite her entirely too suspicious protests.

His running excuse was that he wanted to buy a horse – and he did; her walking to town at least once a week while this far along wasn't acceptable by his way of thinking – but he was pretty sure that she knew he had something else on his mind. Namely, seeing how she was being treated by the random populous of the village.

Though he hadn't thought about it until the realization had slapped him upside the head during one of his spinning sessions, he was under no illusions: pregnant and unwed was not an acceptable thing to be in the Enchanted Forest.

And by the time they'd bought everything they wanted from the village that fact was painfully apparent. Henry was pretty sure that he'd never been quite this angry at people's utter stupidity.

After Henry helped her mount the chestnut mare that they'd managed to acquire, Aubrey caught his hand and murmured, "It's okay."

Instantly knowing what she was talking about, Henry shook his head, eyes heated and face flushed with his unvoiced fury as he replied, "No, it's not. You don't look at people like you were looked at or talk about them like what we _both _heard or act like that towards people – not when nothing wrong's been done."

She smiled with a gentle sadness as she looked down at him and pointed out, "It's not just me they're talking about now that they've seen you.

"So?" he shrugged, honestly not caring about anything more than Aubrey and their baby.

Her sad smile widened just barely in a sad laugh before her expression slipped to match the hurt in her eyes as she asked, "What are you going to do about it?"

The question was practically rhetorical; she'd been implying that there was nothing that he could do – and there wasn't where _other people _were concerned, but he could certainly change _their _situation. Again the light bulb came on above his head, and it just felt too right to be wrong.

He blurted out, "Marry me."

A surprised laugh flew from Aubrey's mouth as her eyes blew wide and she questioned, "What?"

"No, I mean it, Aubrey," Henry said, suddenly excited and swept up in the idea. "I love you and you love me, and we're going to be a family anyway with the baby coming, so why not? Why not, Aubrey? I love you and I don't want to live the rest of my life without you, so why not? Aubrey Freeman, _will you marry me_?"

Aubrey stared at him wide-eyed and opened-mouthed for a long moment. In that second where he stared at her frozen expression, he realized just how much of a leap this would be for her to actually accept his proposal. It occurred to him then that she was a lot like his mother, Emma. Life had been cruel to her, so she'd become hardened to it so that the blows that came her way didn't hurt as much, and she didn't trust easily, despite her bright and teasing exterior. The real Aubrey underneath the oftentimes cocky teasing was rarely seen or shown to the world, but he'd gotten to know that Aubrey, the real Aubrey, over the past six months – and he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. So he waited with baited breath for her answer…

…Only for her to declare, "You're crazy."

Henry's entire world seemed to fall along with his expression, and he felt an undue amount of disappointment, considering the fact that they would still be continuing to live together for at least the next six months.

Seeing his face fall, a slow grin began to spread across Aubrey's face as she added, "But I didn't say no." His eyes flew hopefully back up to hers as she nudged his arm with the toe of her boot, saying brightly, "I'm crazy too, remember?"

Henry laughed aloud as he realized what she meant and grabbed the horse's halter, turning her back towards the village and – more importantly – the cleric's home.

Henry Mills was gaining a wife today.


	14. Chapter 14

"_I hate you_!"

Aubrey's scream ricocheted through the Dark Castle as she clung to Henry's hand for all that she was worth, simultaneously needing him while cursing the very day that he'd been born.

"It's okay," the midwife soothed, and Henry really wasn't sure which teenager she was talking to until she told Aubrey, "Just once more; one more push."

Henry's wife took a deep breath and complied, and in the next minute the sweetest screech that he had ever heard filled the room. Aubrey fell back against the pillows, eyes already drooping with her exhaustion as Henry brushed sweaty strands of blonde hair off of her forehead and placed a kiss there instead.

"You did it," he whispered, watching a tired smile blossom across Aubrey's face.

"Congratulations," the midwife said with a smile of her own as she declared before taking the baby to the other side of the room to make presentable, "It's a girl."

Aubrey had just enough time to tell Henry "I told you so" before she drifted off to sleep for the few minutes the midwife cared for the newborn. Then the baby was in her mother's arms and Henry was leaning over his wife and daughter, falling in love with them both all over again and marveling at the absolute perfection of this situation that he would never have in a million years planned for himself.

"What's her name?" the midwife inquired curiously.

Henry looked at Aubrey, double-checking for a nod on the name that they had already chosen before he said while running a hand over his daughter's feathery, caramel-colored hair, "Belinda Marguerite."

"A beautiful name for a beautiful girl," the midwife commented. "You're very lucky to have such a beautiful girl."

Henry looked back at Aubrey and Belinda, meaning _both _of his girls when he answered, "Indeed, I am."

* * *

><p>After working with Antoine for so long, Grumpy was used to having random conversations with the former giant, but he just wasn't in the mood for it when Tiny called him up while the dwarf was at Granny's Diner sounding <em>way <em>too excited for his tastes. And that was _before _he realized what Tiny was saying.

"Grumpy, I have been a complete idiot."

"Yeah, I know that."

"Early beans, Grump!"

Grumpy held his cell phone away from his ear and looked at it in confused disgust for a second before he put it back in place and requested, "Try making sense, please?"

"_Early beans_. We've been saying that we have to wait six more weeks for anyone to be able to use the beans to go get Henry, but that's not true. I'm in the bean field, and right here, right now I am looking at the first mature bean."

"It's ready to pick and _use_?" Grumpy double checked, sitting up straighter in his chair and getting excited in his own right.

"That's what I've been trying to tell you!"

"I'll call Belle; you get a hold of the Charmings."

* * *

><p>"You are hiding something," Belle accused Rumple under her breath as they raced behind Bae across the bean field towards Tiny.<p>

"Am I?" Rumple asked cryptically.

"Yes. What did you see when you looked into Henry's future that you didn't tell us about?"

Rumple ignored her question, asking instead, "How long have they been gone exactly?"

"Ten and a half months. Why?"

Again Belle's question was ignored as Rumple nodded, pleased as he muttered to himself, "Good; they'll both be safe to travel back then."

"What?"

But then Tiny was throwing the bean onto the ground, a portal to the Enchanted Forest was opening, those who had just arrived in the field were getting ready to jump through said portal, and Belle's unanswered questions were forgotten.

* * *

><p>The first thing that Belle noticed when they came out on the other side of the portal was the scent of hay – stagnant, rotten hay that was sparsely scattered across a cool stone floor. Blinking, Belle shifted onto her hands and knees, catching sight of a large, yellow pillow. The dungeon. Of all the places they could've ended up on this estate, and they had landed in the dungeon.<p>

Though being in her old cell automatically put her in a bad mood, Belle shoved that aside and decided to concentrate on the most important thing – getting Henry and Aubrey safely back home to Storybrooke.

* * *

><p>Regina sat up shakily, catching her breath and patting her hair back into place as she looked around the cell where they'd landed. Swan, Snow White, David, Rumplestiltskin, Belle. But where was-<p>

A hand dropped lightly onto her shoulder from behind and she whipped her head around to look into Robin's cool, concerned blue eyes.

"Are you alright?" he asked, noticing how anxious she was getting.

And for such a silly reason too, not that he would know that…

She nodded jerkily and stood, brushing off her pencil skirt.

Robin rose to his feet beside her, coaxing knowingly, "But what?"

"I'm…" Regina sighed, admitting in a voice low enough that only he could hear her as she subconsciously toyed with her newly-acquired wedding ring. "I'm worried about what Henry will think of our… recent development. Do you think he'll have a problem with the fact that we got married?"

* * *

><p>"Do you hear that?"<p>

At Aubrey's question, Henry's head snapped up from where he'd been using the quiet of one of Lindie's frequent naps to spin a little gold.

He'd been zoned out and hadn't heard anything, so he asked, "Is Lindie awake?"

Aubrey shook her head, eyes clouding with worry as she answered, "It came from _downstairs_. Henry, someone else is in the castle."

He cast his gaze quickly around the sitting room before surging to his feet and taking up one of the two swords that had been hanging on the wall since Rumplestiltskin's days here. "Go sit with Belinda. Lock the nursery door and _do not _come down – no matter what – unless I give you the all-clear."


	15. Chapter 15

Aubrey grabbed the sword that he'd left hanging on the wall and then ran to guard their child. Henry tightened his grip on the sword that he held, David flashing momentarily through his thoughts as he took a deep breath and started down the stairwell to the kitchen.

The farther down the staircase he went, he began to hear a murmur of voices. There was more than one intruder in his home and his wife and newborn daughter were upstairs. He put his sword at the ready at the very thought as he reached the staircase landing, heart pounding in his chest.

Then his heart rate became even faster – because he recognized thought voices. And then he saw them. He froze right there in the doorway, sword lifted, eyes wide, as he took in his first glimpse of his family in forty-two weeks.

Then David noticed him standing there – standing there with a sword and freaking out.

And the whole weapon thing totally ruined the idea of a fairytale family reunion, whether or not they were actually in the Enchanted Forest.

"Hey, buddy!" Prince Charming said a little too loudly, drawing everyone else's attention as he stepped towards Henry with an outstretched hand. "It's just us; you can put the sword down."

The sound of his gramps' voice snapped Henry out of it, and the weapon suddenly clattered to the floor as he ran forward and embraced the man. Then Gran was hugging him too. And his mom… and his mom. And his dad. Rumplestiltskin, Belle, and Robin Hood were there too, they were all surrounding him and hugging him, and for ten full seconds Henry let himself just be a little kid again, happy to be in his mommy's arms. Then he remembered.

He jerked out of the numerous simultaneous embraces, yelping, "Aubrey!"

"What?" Regina asked, wiping tears off of both of their cheeks.

Henry hadn't even realized that he was crying.

"Aubrey; the girl who came here with me. She's-" he almost said "with the baby." "on the fifth floor, where I told her to go when we heard you guys and kind of… freaked out."

"You mean to tell me you don't get many visitors in the creaky old Dark Castle?" Robin asked sardonically.

Henry smiled ruefully, answering, "No; our only one was a couple of weeks ago."

"And what brought her here?" Mr. Gold asked – innocently enough, but almost too innocently, Henry thought for a moment. "Do you mean to say that you've found a use for the fifth level?"

Henry's eyes did narrow then as he realized – of course his father's father knew the implication. He'd built this house via his magic, and the fifth level had been unmistakably set up as a child's dream suite.

Taking a deep breath, Henry answered cryptically, "There are bedrooms up there, remember?"

"Oh, I remember that place very well," Gold answered with a nod, a bright look in his eye. This sort of thing was his version of playing. "Empty though it's unfortunately remained before your stay here."

"But it is the brightest part of the castle, Rumple," Belle pointed out logically. "This place can be creepy, and I wouldn't blame a couple of teenagers for preferring that space above the bedrooms on the fourth level."

Henry could've hugged her.

"Ah, but my dear," Gold replied, still looking at Henry. "You forget that I am a seer. You should know, Henry," he continued, starting up the stairway to the main level with the others inevitably trailing him. "That your 'gramps' asked me the night you disappeared to look into your future. So I looked into your Aubrey's technically, and learned quite a lot – and then I had ten months to decipher it all."

"So?" Henry shrugged, matching his stride as they made the landing in front of the others and went into the sitting room."

"So I'm probably going to be the only one not shocked by the amount of… gold that's to be found in this room." Mr. Gold gave him a genuinely happy-to-see-him smile as he gently tapped his grandson's ring finger. Henry quickly covered the ring with his right hand as the others poured into the room and Mr. Gold asked, "Aren't you going to call your Aubrey down here?"

"Why do you keep calling her 'his' Aubrey?" Regina asked, narrowing her eyes at Mr. Gold as Henry went to the doorway of the room and called out for Aubrey.

He thought a little too late that he probably should've just gone and retrieved her, seeing as Lindie was sleeping, but there was nothing he could do about it now except for hope that his daughter was choosing to sleep deeply at the moment. A moment later, Aubrey sprinted down the stairs and skidded to a surprised stop in the doorway, almost running into Henry as she copped their visitors.

After her shock had passed, wariness came into her eyes that had Henry wrapping an arm around her waist and fighting the urge to pull her close as he said, "Aubrey, meet my family… Family, this is Aubrey."

"Freeman, right?" Rumplestiltskin asked, stepping forward and offering her his hand to shake.

She returned the proffered gesture with a hesitant nod before glancing worriedly at Henry and then pointedly towards the staircase that led upstairs.

"What's wrong?" Emma asked her suddenly.

Aubrey's eyes snapped to Emma's face as she asked, trying to appear calm, "Do what?"

Emma crossed her arms over her chest and the two blondes studied each other before Henry's mother pointed out, "You're lying about something." She included Henry in her gaze then as she asked, "So what's up?"

"The sky," Henry answered, hoping to buy a little time to try and figure out how to explain to his family that he now had a wife and daughter.

But Rumplestiltskin was way ahead of him apparently as he stepped up to his spinning wheel and said, "And gold, apparently."

Oh boy, and didn't that catch everyone's attention – particularly Neal's, Henry noticed feeling like a stone had suddenly sunk to the bottom of his stomach.


	16. Chapter 16

They all crowded around the wheel to see the freshly-spun gold, leaving Henry and Aubrey alone in the doorway for a minute during which Aubrey instantly hissed, mother-bear instincts obviously in overdrive, "What do we do about Lindie?"

"Tell them the truth; it's not like we can leave her here."

"What about our-?" she flashed her left hand, indicating her wedding ring.

"Not leaving you either, beautiful," Henry said with a soft smile. "'Whatever happens, I'll take care of us,' remember?"

Aubrey swallowed and nodded, eyes still swimming with uncertainty. She trusted him, but not anyone else here, and that meant that she was struggling not to mentally and emotionally crawl back into her old shell, considering the building intensity of their current situation. Henry knew that, saw it all in her eyes, and suggested gently, "Why don't you go back up and sit in the nursery?"

"Henry, did you do this gold?"

Neal's voice carried to them from across the room and Henry instantly stiffened with terror at the many – potentially not great – ways that his father could react to the answer to that question. Aubrey noticed his discomfort and lifted her chin, squaring her shoulders as she looked her husband in the eye and said resolutely, "I need to be with you right now."

Translation: Henry needed her _with him_, and she knew it. Gods, he loved his wife.

He squared his own shoulders and turned towards his father, answering, "I spun it, yes."

"Is that what's been going on here?" Emma asked.

Henry answered honestly, replying, "Among other things, yes." And then he asked, eyeing his dad in particular, "Is that okay? I just… I needed a way to support us while we waited for you to come for us, and spinning gold was easy enough to figure out from what I'd already learned about magic."

"Yeah," Neal answered, accepting this with a slow nod. "That makes sense. Have you learned any other spells?"

"Healing spells, but I haven't had much occasion to actually put them to use except for on a nasty case of colic." And then he panicked, realizing he'd just made a reference to Belinda, and tacked on the lie, "For our horse."

He stared straight at his dad, _refusing _to see the smirk that was suddenly playing freely on Rumplestiltskin's amused expression.

And then, with timing only his daughter could muster, it happened. Belinda's unhappy scream filtered down the stairs, putting her perfectly healthy lungs on display.

Eyebrows hit hairlines all over the room and Belle asked, "What is _that_?"

Henry frowned but glanced at Aubrey all the same; giving her the go-ahead to retrieve their child, and, with a final squeeze of his hand, his wife vanished from the room and up the stairs.

"Is that a _baby_?" Snow White asked.

Emma quizzed, "Is it Aubrey's? Was she pregnant when you guys landed here?"

"Somewhere right around that time, yes," Henry answered, glancing around the room.

Rumplestiltskin waved his hand and suddenly there was not one chair but five loveseats in a cluster in front of the fireplace. "I think we might want to be seated for this conversation," he explained, sitting himself down.

The others got comfortable on the loveseats as well, and by then Aubrey was making her way back into the room, protectively clutching to her chest what appeared to be a bundle of blankets.

"What the heck is going on here…?" Neal muttered disapprovingly.

Henry felt his gaze suddenly become a glare as he turned his eyes to his father, but before he could open his mouth, Aubrey's hand was on his shoulder and she was sitting down beside him, her own eyes begging him to play nice. She was desperately afraid of what might happen to her and Belinda now that Henry was surrounded by his family again, and his first priority had to be vanquishing that fear and getting this all straightened out. Picking fights with his dad because they were all on edge couldn't be on Henry's to do list right now.

"Why don't you start at the beginning?" Mr. Gold suggested, sitting forward in his chair and acting for the entire world like a mischievous version of Dr. Hopper.

"I thought you already knew everything," Henry pointed out wearily.

"There's still a few things I'd like you to iron out for me."

"Well, don't ask me how we ended up here," Henry began with a sigh. "Because I really don't know… but I do need you guys to be okay with where we ended up."

"I believe someone else has expressed that desire today," Robin broke in, squeezing Regina's hand. "For some reason, your poor mother believes that you may not be happy with the fact that she and I married two months ago."

"You… you're married?" Henry repeated, looking between Robin and Regina, the latter of whom nodded. He smiled, saying, "That's great, you guys, really it is," His smile became careful as he took Aubrey's free hand in his own and said, "Because so are we."

Dead silence and then Rumple's "Really? No one saw that coming? No one noticed their _wedding rings_?"

"Shut up," Regina demanded of the Dark One.

Neal asked his son slowly, "Do you think that's a good idea at your age?"

Henry felt a flash of irritation as he said only, "Yes."

"I know you're eighteen now, but you two didn't even graduate before you left," Neal tried again.

"But it was late enough in the year that we both had our diplomas; we just weren't able to show up for graduation," Henry pointed out. "We only missed the last week of school."

"I just don't think-"

"No, I know what you think," Henry snapped suddenly. "Believe me; I know what you and Mom think of teenage parents. Well, I'm sorry but I'm not willing to do that to Aubrey or my daughter!"

"Henry!" Aubrey said loudly, tone ordering him to calm down.

He took a deep breath and took her hand, repeating with an entirely different meaning, "Sorry. But…" he looked carefully at his parents, trying to get them to understand. "I mean it. Aubrey's my _wife_ and she's holding our daughter, and I will do whatever it takes to keep the three of us together as a family."


	17. Chapter 17

Neal inhaled deeply and seemed to be mulling that over when he suddenly turned to his father and asked, "Papa, what did you mean when you said… when Henry disappeared, you said that he turned out better than we did. Is that what you meant; that he'd be the best family man out of the men here?"

Rumplestiltskin looked at his son a little gently as he clarified, not at all unkindly, "A boy, a blonde, and their baby? Yes, that's what I meant."

Neal swallowed with some difficulty and looked guiltily down at his hands. Beside him, Emma glared at Gold before leaning into Neal's shoulder – and grabbing his hand, just like Aubrey was doing to Henry. The observation made Henry smile to himself as he realized again how similar his mother and his wife were.

He was willing to bet that the two of them were going to become friends, given time… His thoughts began to wander in that direction until Robin spoke up.

"Can I ask a question?" the thief queried. "A powerful heart – like Emma's and Henry's – _has _to come from being the product of true love, right?"  
>"Yes," Regina supplied.<p>

"But, Neal, didn't you and Emma meet when you were both only sixteen?"

"Yeah."

"Then isn't it possible that your son could've met his true love at seventeen, and, if so, you wouldn't want to get in the way of that, would you?"

That was the first time that Henry would have said that he actually loved his new stepfather. Instead of voicing the thought, he just grinned and watched the conversation happen.

"Yes, it is," Neal admitted. "And no, I wouldn't."

Then, considering that, their married status, and their babe, shouldn't we be in agreement with the idea of themt at least trying to continue being one family once in Storybrooke? I care for the boy too, but he looks more like a man in love than a boy right now, don't you think?"

Neal looked across at his son, and Henry didn't miss the awed pride in his eyes as he answered, "Yeah, he does; you're right. Papa… you've looked into Aubrey more than anyone. Do you trust her to be a good thing for Henry?"

Henry's jaw tightened – he'd forgotten how blunt his father could be – but Mr. Gold helped Henry's attitude settle when he answered simply, "She already is a good thing – perhaps the best thing – in his life. And she will continue to be so for years to come."

"That's good enough for me then," Neal answered resolutely. "Welcome to our crazy family, Aubrey."

Thankfully, everyone else seemed to agree with Neal, and the atmosphere in the room become much more relaxed and welcoming, especially towards the two girls at Henry's side. Snow White sprang to her feet and moved to stand beside Aubrey to peer at the baby.

Henry's grandmother dissolved into cooing mush before she asked, "What's her name?"

Henry glanced at Snow, and then Aubrey and Belle before Aubrey answered for her husband, "Belinda Marguerite."

"Well, I see who you missed," Emma teased her son with a bright smile.

Henry grinned in response, answering, "It's a name Aubrey and I both liked."

"Can I hold her?" Belle asked, standing to her feet.

Gold put a hand on her arm, suggesting, "Maybe her mother would like to keep her while we go back to Storybrooke?"

Belle nodded and Charming stood, taking that as his cue and requesting, "Follow me, everybody."

The whole group trailed David into the garden where he took a bean from his pocket and threw it down onto the ground, opening a new portal.

Henry sough Aubrey's hand as they formed a circle around the whirling green hole and looked into her eyes as he asked, "Ready?"

She searched his gaze, steeling herself before she took a deep breath, looked into the portal, and nodded. Then, with her hand in his and Belinda nestled in the crook of her other arm, she leapt with him.

* * *

><p>Henry was never sure how Mr. Gold managed to come out of a portal on his feet, but he was grateful to notice that his grandfather had seen to it that Aubrey did so as well, ensuring that both Belinda and Aubrey went unharmed by what could've been a rocky landing. The second thing that the teenager noticed was that they were in Tiny's bean field. The third thing was that Tiny and the dwarves were rushing towards him. For the second time that day, he found himself surrounded – and exclaimed over – by loved ones.<p>

Yet he still found himself reaching through the crowd, seeking and finding Aubrey's hand in his, needing her and knowing just how much she needed him. Her skin was clammy and her grip was shaky. She was _terrified _that he was going to abandon her now that he was back with his blood relatives.

So he squeezed her hand to catch her eye and mouthed _I loved you most_. Then one grandmother or another was snatching Belinda up into her arms and David was steering everyone into vehicles with directions to regroup at Granny's and nobody besides Henry knew Aubrey well enough to see how troubled she was. And Henry, for one, didn't know how to fix her uncertainties.

* * *

><p>Regina knew her son, or at least what was meant by some of his facial expressions. So when he managed to get her to himself in her car on the ride to Granny's, she had a feeling that it was because he wanted verification of information. She was, of course, quickly proven tight.<p>

Henry started the conversation with, "I'm willing to bet that by now you've brushed up on who Aubrey is, am I right?"

"When Gold mentioned her name last year, yes, I did."

"Her parents are dead back in the Enchanted Forest?"

"Right."

"But she has foster parents here?"

Regina sighed, warily admitting, "They aren't the greatest people. The few foster parents her in Storybrooke where paid by the town to care for their foster kids. Having a few foster kids in town made Storybrooke more normal. Aubrey aged out of the system while you were away."

Henry flatly stated what his mother was dancing all around: "They want nothing to do with her now that there's no money involved."

"That's what it looks like, yes."

"Then I guess I really am still the only person she's got."

Regina glanced sideways at him, stating, "Your family's her family now too."

* * *

><p>Henry was not quite prepared for the cacophony that met him the moment he stepped into Granny's. Apparently phone calls had been made on the way over here, and the place was now brimming with people who wanted to see Storybrooke's favorite kid. Only, he wasn't such a kid anymore, and the moment he stepped into the restaurant, Aubrey was at his side again because he was her <em>husband <em>and _he _was the one that she relied upon.

He pulled her flush against his side and put an arm around her shoulders, gaze scanning the restaurant in search of Belinda's whereabouts. There; Red was holding her, surrounded by a solid wall of would-be grandmas: Granny, Snow, Belle, Regina, Emma. Even Kathryn Nolan and Marian were standing nearby and exclaiming over the little one. The sight of it made Henry smile, and he made a mental note to enquire later if Red just might be available for babysitting duties every once in awhile. She had been his favorite and most trusted babysitter as a child, so why not, right?

"See," Henry whispered near Aubrey's ear, turning his attention back to his wife. "See all of these people? They're here for you and Lindie too. They're all considered my family, and you're my wife and daughter, so that makes them your family too. Believe me, we'll be okay. Whatever happens, I'll take care of us,' remember? We'll make this work, I promise."

Someone cleared their throat directly behind Henry, and he whipped around to see his father's father standing there wearing a slightly amused expression. "Speaking of work," the older man began, eyeing his grandson. "Since you're a graduate and presumably looking for employment, would you be interested in resuming your apprenticeship with me from before you left? I could make it fulltime, and that would come with a significant pay increase. You wouldn't be rich, but the three of you could get by on it."

Henry didn't think his smile could get any wider as he shook Rumplestiltskin's hand enthusiastically. "Thank you; that would be… perfect. Thank you."

Mr. Gold was smiling too as he replied with a nod, "Good; just stop by the shop tomorrow and we can get the particulars ironed out. Plan on starting next Monday?"

"Yes!"

Belle came up to them then, laying a hand on her husband's arm and asking, "Did you tell them about the caretaker's quarters?"

"I was going to let you do that," Mr. Gold replied.

Henry and Aubrey both turned to Belle with questioning expressions, so she explained, "There's an unused caretaker's apartment above the library. It's hardly Rumple's Castle, but it's of no use to anyone right now. If one of you two would be willing to work in the library for… let's say ten hours a week, I think we could work something out where the three of you could live there."

Henry laughed outright with relief as Aubrey's eyes blew wide with shock at all of these pieces of their puzzle falling so easily into place.

"I think I can manage being around books for ten hours," the blonde declared.

Belle teased, "Every week?"

Aubrey grinned at her and nodded, her eyes glittering with happiness as it all began to sink in. She and her husband might just be able to make a life for themselves and their daughter in this town. It wasn't just him _saying _that she and Lindie were a part of his huge family; it was his family actually _showing _her that, _proving _it to her. Henry knew his wife well enough to know that was a dream come true for her.

Or perhaps – for the both of them – it was more of a… happily ever after.

Yeah. Henry beamed as the very accurate thought came to mind and he pulled Aubrey into his arms, kissing her soundly. Happily ever after was exactly what this was.

* * *

><p><strong>Thus the story ends. Hopefully you guys enjoyed it. Reviews would make my day, if you're so inclined! Thanks!:)<strong>


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